“Your wife is beautiful,” Zach told him.
How do I play this? He couldn’t be a man completely in love…not when their divorce was only months away.
“She is,” Michael told his brother, purposely not meeting his gaze.
“And she doesn’t seem to be as plastic as a lot of your guests tonight.”
Michael drank from his bottle. “She isn’t.” He kept his voice even, trying not to show any real joy or discomfort in his brother’s words.
“So what’s the deal, Mike? Why are you hiding her from us?”
He blew out a breath between his teeth. One he actually felt instead of inserting it for a moment of drama.
“Is that what I’m doing?”
“That’s the discussion back home. You have to know she’s part of the reason I’m here.”
“Mom’s pissed, huh?”
“Pissed? She’s damn near manic. Then you only called when you were on location…never giving her a chance to talk to your wife. If it wasn’t for Hannah following your every move, I wouldn’t have known you were in town.”
Hannah was his sister, the baby of the family. Michael had to think about how old she was now. Sixteen? No, seventeen. Damn. “I suck.”
“Yeah, you do. You’re busy. I get it. But what would it have taken for you to bring her by? To invite your own damn family to this little shindig?”
“Dad would hate this.”
“Hannah and Judy would eat it up.”
“Mom would have felt she needed to cook.”
“So give her a job. Seems Karen was running around keeping things together.”
Michael laughed. “Karen didn’t cook anything.”
“That’s not the point, damn it, and you know it. I half expected your wife to be a complete bitch.”
That shot Michael’s gaze to his brother’s.
“Well there has to be a reason you don’t want her to meet us.”
“Is that why you’re here? To find the flaws in my wife?” Because there weren’t any. Karen was fucking perfect. He couldn’t keep the defensiveness out of his voice. No acting needed.
“I’m here to save you the unfortunate event of our entire family showing up on your doorstep.”
“Is that right?”
Zach set his beer down. “Yeah. And if I don’t give Mom and Dad an ETA when they can expect to see you both, they’re going to show up unannounced. Might be here, might be in one of those crazy-ass locations you work in.”
The thought of his father showing up when makeup was working on him made Michael actually shudder.
Michael pushed off the couch and walked into the kitchen. He tossed his empty beer bottle in the trash and grabbed a bottle of water. He didn’t need his marriage questioned now. He was leaving in two weeks for a shoot in Canada and his agent was already working on a deal for the next year. His and Karen’s divorce was scheduled to happen after the contracts were signed. The publicity of his divorce and him being on the market again would drive in fans. Nothing quite like “that poor boy is heartbroken, let me help him feel better” to drive the female viewers to his flicks.
Maybe this new twist could work to his advantage.
He’d always kept his private life private. Even from his family. In truth, he didn’t want to involve them. But he didn’t want them hating Karen when they divorced either.
Zach walked into the kitchen, tossed his beer next to Michael’s. “So what’s the deal, Mike? You going to tell me what’s going on, or are you going to introduce your wife to the family?”
He ran a hand through his hair. “I have to talk to Karen. See if she can free up her schedule.”
Zach snorted. “What, the country club requires advance notice if you don’t go?”
“Screw you, Zach. Karen volunteers at the Boys and Girls Club. She doesn’t belong to a country club.”
Zach’s smirk fell. “Oh.”
“That attitude, by the way, is exactly why I haven’t brought Karen around. I don’t need people passing judgment on her or me for our life.” His motivation for keeping her to himself solidified in front of him. But, like all well-played parts, this one required time to build.
“I’m sorry.” Zach’s apology was quick and to the point. No buts required. “I didn’t come here to fight.”
Michael placed a smile on his lips. “It’s OK. I’ll talk to Karen.”
“Don’t know what you’re worried about, dude. From what I’ve seen, our folks are going to love her.”
Yeah, damn it, they would.
As tired as she was, sleeping in Michael’s bed just wasn’t happening. She beat the pillow under her head and attempted to twist it into a comfortable position. Nothing worked.
Finally, she slipped out of his bed, padded through their joined bathroom, and grabbed the book sitting on her bedside table and returned to Michael’s room.
Some of the kids at the club had to read the classic in her hand for finals. It was taking serious effort to read the book, and she was an adult. Why didn’t high school English teachers figure out that reading outdated books put their students to sleep?
Sure enough, her eyes drifted closed after half a chapter.
The sound of the door opening brought her awake and the book slid to the floor.
“Hey?” Michael said as he walked over to the bed. The normal smile on his face wasn’t there. Strangely, Karen was pleased he didn’t pretend with her.
“Was it bad?”
He sat on the edge of the bed, toed off his shoes. “Not bad. Just complicated.”
“We’ve avoided your family for a year.”
“Yeah. A few months more would have been nice.”
Karen leaned over, picked up her book, and put it on the nightstand.
“Wanna talk about it?” He hadn’t in the past, but his hesitation made her push. “C’mon, Michael.” She lowered her voice. “You don’t have a lover, and you know you can trust me. Who else can you talk to?”
There was his smile. He reached over and laid a hand on her leg through the blankets. “It would be so much easier if women turned me on. I’d marry you all over again.”
“You wouldn’t have met me if women did it for you,” she teased.
“Still would have been easier.”
She couldn’t argue that. “Tell me about your family.”
Just like that, the gates opened. He leaned against the bedpost and kicked his feet up on the bed. “Rena is the oldest, married her high school sweetheart, has two kids. Zach is older than me by a year and a half. Total jock in school. Then there’s me. After a few years, we didn’t think there would be any more of us, then Judy arrived, and a handful of years later came Hannah. Jesus, Karen, I forgot how old my youngest sister was.” He shook his head in what looked like disgust with himself.
“What about your parents? Happy?”
“June and Ward had nothing on my parents. Cookie-baking mom, dad worked hard, built his business.”
Karen reached deep in her memory to what she’d read in Michael’s profile before she agreed to meet him. “Hardware store?”
“Yeah. Zach runs a small construction crew now. It’s a small town, didn’t take a lot to be the go-to guy for a team. I think my dad wanted some of that for me. My dad was disappointed in me from the beginning.”
Karen waited for him to elaborate. For a while, she thought he’d stop talking. “I tried, Karen. I can work alongside my dad, but never liked it. I like cars, but didn’t want to work on them. Zach was always working on his car, trying to drag me under it.”
“Other than Neil, I don’t know one guy who willingly works on his own car.”
“Yeah, but it was more than cars. It seemed everything that defined Sawyer Gardner didn’t define me.”
“Did you and your dad fight?”
“We didn’t have to fight for me to understand his disappointment.”
In that moment, Karen knew why Michael worked so hard to be America’s bad boy on screen.
&
nbsp; “It didn’t help that Hilton, Utah, is about as backwater as it comes for small towns. The running joke is Hilton isn’t big enough for a Hilton.” He laughed at that, as if it brought him a pleasant memory. “And Utah…Jesus, have you ever been there?”
“You’ve seen where I’ve been.” She’d not traveled outside of California before meeting Samantha and hooking up with Alliance. Since then, she’d traveled to Europe a couple of times, Canada, where Michael had shot more than one film in their brief marriage, and Aruba for one more wedding in their circle of friends.
“You can’t get a drink in Hilton, Utah, on Sunday.”
“Really?”
“Backwater. I’m telling you. Everyone knows everything about everybody.”
“I’m starting to understand why you left.” She did. Michael’s sexuality would never have flown there. But it wasn’t exactly flying here either.
“If it’s so ass-backward, why does your family stay?”
He sucked in a breath. “I don’t know. Good people. It didn’t suck growing up there. Crime isn’t off the charts.”
“Small-town America.” Where secrets are hidden and the kids run to the city at the first opportunity they get. Karen glanced at the hands in her lap and fiddled with the ring Michael had placed on her finger.
Damn. Michael was like one of her kids at the club. One that needed direction to find himself, to forgive himself for not being just like the other kids. She wasn’t sure he would ever give himself permission to be himself, to give up his tough-guy image…but she wouldn’t live with herself if she didn’t try. “We should visit your family.”
His silence made her look up.
“You’d do that?”
“Michael, I said I was in this with you, and I meant it.”
He wore a strange expression on his face. It was laced with question and concern. “We’d stay with my parents.”
“How bad can that be?”
“In a room the size of this bed.”
“So don’t snore and let me have the covers. We’ll be fine. Remember the bed in France?” They’d had a “brief” honeymoon in France and ended up at a chateau in a small winery. Michael had asked and paid for deluxe accommodations. They ended up with a twin bed and a bathroom with only cold running water…and pictures of them spread through the tabloids the next day. They’d held hands and laughed like friends, and by the time they had to come home, Karen knew there was no possible way for her to hold any attraction to the man she called husband. There simply wasn’t any chemistry.
Michael took her hand in his and kissed the edges of her fingertips. “Thanks, Karen.”
As he walked into the bathroom, and the sound of running water met her ears, Karen’s smile fell.
Small-town America. How bad could it be?
Chapter Four
Zach usually made it out of bed before dawn. Sleeping in would have been a luxury, and his brother’s digs were beyond comfortable. The king-size bed was overkill for a guest room, but Zach wasn’t complaining. He was tall, like his brother, and he always hung off beds in hotels. There were tile floors throughout the home, and in the bedrooms large colorful carpets warmed up the space. He couldn’t help but wonder if Karen had anything to do with the decor of the home. She and Mike had only been married a year, and not everything he’d seen looked new. In fact, there were antiques throughout the house and various pieces of art scattered along the walls.
He liked it. The entire palette of colors and textures wasn’t something he would have chosen, but he couldn’t deny the warmth and comfort of the home.
Zach had to admit that their father would probably hate it. He’d think everything was too perfect, too staged. Even though the home appeared more casual than he expected for his hotshot Hollywood movie star brother, he understood what things cost. On the construction level, there was crown molding and carved paneling along the walls in the main hall. The massive fireplace in the great room was large enough for a child to walk into. With a little less Spanish influence, and a little more Western rustic, this house would be perfect for him.
The sun peeked through the windowed doors that opened into the courtyard. Across the yard, he noticed movement through the rooms on the other side. The u shape broke the home up into two sections. He assumed that either his brother or Karen was up and preparing for their day.
He pushed out of bed and walked naked into the adjoining bathroom. As he’d discovered the night before, the lights came on with movement. He wondered what that little trick cost Michael to put in place. No one in Hilton wanted those kinds of touches. No, Hilton wanted functional and cheap. The hardware store that provided them food and clothes growing up would have to special order nearly every fixture in the bathroom, every hinge on the doors.
“You did good, kid,” Zach whispered to himself as he ran his hand over the marble countertop.
Zach showered and dressed before leaving his room in search of coffee. He rounded the corner and spotted Karen struggling with the front door with her hands full of catering trays.
“Let me get that.” He relieved her arms of the load.
“Oh, thanks.” She opened the door and led him out to the drive, where several cars were still sitting from the night before. “I should have had Michael load the car before we went to bed last night.”
“No problem.”
Today Karen was dressed in tight-fitting jeans and a simple pullover shirt she’d tucked in. Her face was free of makeup and her hair was pulled into a ponytail. There wasn’t one ounce of polish on her like he’d seen the night before, no silk, no shiny jewelry dangling from her ears or her neck. Without heels, the top of her head barely made it to his chin. She wasn’t at all what he’d assumed she’d be from the pictures he’d seen.
Karen opened the hatch of the SUV and moved around to the second set of doors to lower the back seats. “Just pile those up. I have a few more to bring out.”
“What’s all this for?” He set the trays down and shoved them up toward the seats to make room for more.
“The kids at the club.”
“You feed them?”
Karen walked around him back to the house. “Not all the time. But they know after we’ve had a party to expect something special.”
He followed her into a huge pantry off the kitchen, which housed another refrigerator. Inside were several more trays of food. “All of this is leftovers?”
“No. We have the chef make extra, more kid-friendly food. The kids will eat the fancy desserts but skip the caviar.”
“I’d skip the caviar.”
Karen laughed and the sound splashed over him with warmth. “Yeah, me, too. I find more fish eggs in crumbled up napkins after these parties than I can count.” She started pulling the oversize trays out one at a time and loaded him up. When he kept nodding for more, she continued to pile until they met his chin.
She pulled the last one and walked with him back to the car. “If no one eats the caviar, why do you serve it?”
“Some things are expected. Have you met Tony?”
“No.”
“Tony is Michael’s manager. He takes great pains in knowing the personal tastes of many of Michael’s co-workers, the producers, so that everyone feels taken care of when they visit.”
“Do you know their tastes?”
“I have a hard time with their names. Knowing if they’re a vegetarian, or Jewish to the point of only eating Kosher…not a clue. Tony, on the other hand, has it all down.”
Interesting. “But you know what the kids at the club eat?”
She helped him with his load until the back of the car was stacked full. She pressed a button and the hatch closed. “They’re kids. They haven’t been told what to like yet. I just try to keep it healthy without being obvious. Dip the strawberries in chocolate and leave fresh ones alongside them, and they all disappear.”
Zach leaned against the car since she wasn’t working her way back into the house. “My mom smothered broccoli in chees
e sauce.”
“Exactly.”
“It sounds like you take good care of the kids.”
“They’re good kids. We can afford to spoil them.”
“So you like kids?”
“Yeah.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “But you don’t want any of your own?”
She blinked a couple of times. The answer stuck somewhere between her brain and her lips. “I’d like kids…someday.” She narrowed her blue eyes on him. “Well, I should go.”
Zach pushed away from the car, giving her room.
She opened the driver’s door and said, “Can you remind Michael that he promised to stop by at three today? He said something about taking you out to shop for your sister’s birthday present.”
He’d forgotten. “Shopping. Yeah.” There was no joy in his voice.
“I’ll ask the girls what’s on the top of a seventeen-year-old’s wish list. Maybe they can help.”
“If it cuts out hours, I’m all ears.”
“You sound like Michael.”
Zach shook his head. “No, he sounds like me. I’m older.”
Karen slid on a pair of sunglasses and dropped behind the wheel, a smile played on her lips. “I’ll see you later then.”
He watched her drive away and hated how much he would enjoy seeing her later.
Karen brought the food early so kids could jump in before school and grab a bite. Much like Pavlov’s dogs, which salivated with the sound of a bell, every kid in the club knew when Karen and Michael threw a party, and whenever Michael himself was going to make an appearance. She had to admit, making Michael her temporary husband had been a complete windfall for the kids.
Last year the club had been struggling with finances, and she was dipping into her income to help. It wasn’t as if she had a big account or anything. Oh, she could hit up Samantha, and didn’t feel guilty about doing so once in a while. But this was her passion, and she didn’t want to mooch off her friends, even if her friends had serious money.
The Weekday Brides 04 - Single by Saturday Page 3
